8. Page rank is important, but like all other aspects there is no 'magic bullet' where one thing will rocket you to the top. The purpose of links should be about gaining new users from other sites. We may know differently, but too often newbies get caught up on seeing the little green bar go up and lose sight of more important stuff. I have clients whose #5 referral site is a PR0 while a link on a PR6 site isn’t even in the Top 100 referrals. Don’t become PR prejudice!
9. Domains. This is often our first step…getting a Domain Name. Stick with shorter, easy to brand domain names over
www.keyword-keyword-secondarykeyword.com (exceptions for test domains <g>)
*Special Note for Adult site domains: If it’s a really choice domain name and someone is selling it- ask yourself why they are selling it? If they have gotten a Google penalty it will be a huge uphill battle to bring it back to life. *ALWAYS check the Way Back Machine to see what they were sticking on their site!
10. If you use what is commonly called ‘blackhat’ techniques like Cloaking, it is very important you perform your initial tests on a ‘throw away domain’ until you really nail your techniques down.
11. Backlinks with a PR4 and above will show in Google’s Backlinks on toolbar or 'link:
www.domain.com' but links from lower PR sites *still* count.
12. Use
www.alltheweb.com come to check back links to see as many backlinks as possible regardless of PR. This is my personal choice. Doesn’t mean all those links are counted in Google BUT it can be very useful to see the broader picture. E.g. Google may only show 40 links, but when ya check ATW you see over 500.
13. Useful Google queries "link:
www.domain.com". "allinurl:
www.domain.com" "allinanchor:word or phrase", “allintitle:word or phrase” Get the Google Hacks book for a lot of cool stuff.
14. A bigger site with more pages that has proper site map MAY benefit from the internal linking, hence the bigger (more content/more pages) is better theory.
15. Buying a text link or any sort of link just for PR is something Google does not like AT ALL. Do not under any circumstances buy a link from a site that references their PageRank in their content!